This legendary book of New York school poetry finally appears complete. In previous editions there were mysteriously missing poems. Alice Notley, who was married to Berrigan, provides an illuminating introduction.

Although many critics and readers have crowned contemporaries John Ashbery or Frank O'Hara the champions of abstract expressionism in poetry, Berrigan's work is often dismissed because on the surface it is overtly stylistic. And while Ashbery speaks in riddles, Berrigan seems to know the worlds that surrounds each phrase and it's arrangement, (or lack thereof). his sonnets are an essential read for anyone interested in the richness, abandonment, and just plain wackiness that can be brought to life through language or even sounds.

An accomplished and moving book, Mysteries of Small Houses shows Alice Notley writing at the top of her form. Her autobiographical poems are rich and detailed, with an immediacy of attention that derives from her roots in the second-generation New York school, and which is used here to show the reader what it was like to have lived, at no small cost, a life dedicated to poetry. There's a highly individual sensibility at work here, and an admirable one.